TypeScript Boilerplate for 2021

TypeScript project boilerplate with modern tooling, for Node.js programs, libraries and browser modules. Get started quickly and right-footed 🚀

• TypeScript 4
• Optionally esbuild to bundle for browsers (and Node.js)
• Linting with typescript-eslint (tslint is deprecated)
• Testing with Jest (and ts-jest)
• Publishing to npm
• Continuous integration (GitHub Actions / GitLab CI)
• Automatic API documentation with TypeDoc

See also the introduction blog post: Starting a TypeScript Project in 2021.

Getting Started

# Clone the repository (you can also click "Use this template")
git clone https://github.com/freeatnet/typescript-boilerplate.git your_project_name
cd your_project_name

# Edit `package.json` and `tsconfig.json` to your liking
...

# Install dependencies
yarn install

# Now you can run various yarn commands:
yarn cli
yarn lint
yarn test
yarn build-all
yarn ts-node <filename>
yarn esbuild-browser
...

• Take a look at all the scripts in package.json
• For publishing to npm, use yarn publish (or npm publish)

esbuild

esbuild is an extremely fast bundler that supports a large part of the TypeScript syntax. This project uses it to bundle for browsers (and Node.js if you want).

# Build for browsers
yarn esbuild-browser:dev
yarn esbuild-browser:watch

# Build the cli for node
yarn esbuild-node:dev
yarn esbuild-node:watch

You can generate a full clean build with yarn build-all (which uses both tsc and esbuild).

• package.json includes scripts for various esbuild commands: see here
• esbuild has a --global-name=xyz flag, to store the exports from the entry point in a global variable. See also the esbuild "Global name" docs.
• Read more about the esbuild setup here.
• esbuild for the browser uses the IIFE (immediately-invoked function expression) format, which executes the bundled code on load (see also https://github.com/evanw/esbuild/issues/29)

Tests with Jest

You can write Jest tests like this:

import { greet } from './main'

test('the data is peanut butter', () => {
  expect(1).toBe(1)
});

test('greeting', () => {
  expect(greet('Foo')).toBe('Hello Foo')
});

Run the tests with yarn test, no separate compile step is necessary.

• See also the Jest documentation.
• The tests can be automatically run in CI (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI): .github/workflows/lint-and-test.yml, .gitlab-ci.yml
• Take a look at other modern test runners such as ava, uvu and tape

Documentation, published with CI

You can auto-generate API documentation from the TyoeScript source files using TypeDoc. The generated documentation can be published to GitHub / GitLab pages through the CI.

Generate the documentation, using src/main.ts as entrypoint (configured in package.json):

yarn docs

The resulting HTML is saved in docs/.

You can publish the documentation through CI:

• GitHub pages: See .github/workflows/deploy-gh-pages.yml
• GitLab pages: .gitlab-ci.yml

This is the documentation for this boilerplate project: https://metachris.github.io/typescript-boilerplate/

References

• Blog post: Starting a TypeScript Project in 2021
• TypeScript Handbook
• tsconfig docs
• esbuild docs
• typescript-eslint docs
• Jest docs
• GitHub Actions, GitLab CI

Feedback

Reach out with feedback and ideas:

• twitter.com/metachris
• Create a new issue